Anyone still reading?

I still have to write about our visit to Japan, the third leg of our trip. As always, it is not easy to find time to blog, but what has really stopped me is a flu bug that we all caught. It has kept Deirdre home from work and wiped me out too.

I'm feeling much better now, so I can only rely on traditional excuses for not getting round to writing it. It will be up eventually though, trust me.

Home again

Good God it is cold in this country!

We got back on Monday and flew into some awful weather. It was a quite emphatic end to our holiday.

But we had a fantastic time while we were away. Thanks heaps to everyone who put us up – thanks to Sam and Row and to Richie and Hiro and to Shinobu and to Kevin and Jenny. It was great to spend time with you guys and I hope you will one day let us return the favour.

I'm hoping to do a bit more on this blog, writing about our time in Japan and adding a few photos to the St Petersburg post. So do check back in a few days.

"Welcome to the White Nights"

It is so hard to sleep when it is still light at midnight.

St Petersburg is unlike any city I have ever visited. It is a very charming city, cut through by canals lined with stately stucco-clad buildings. And dotted through the city are countless breath-taking buildings and monuments, such as the Winter Palace, St Isaac's Cathedral and the headquarters of the Singer sewing machine company. It is a much less brash city than Moscow, but all the more impressive.

We travelled up from Moscow by overnight train. This promised to be an interesting journey, with several hours of daylight in which to watch the Russian countryside passing by. Instead it was a trial of patience waiting for the boy to stop bouncing off the walls and go to sleep.

We're staying in a little apartment in the very heart of St Petersburg. It is on the 5-½ floor of a 6-½-floor apartment building. When we were let into the building by the apartment owner, it didn't look promising. The entrance was into a dirty, run-down stairwell, like we had stepped into some derelict factory space. However, the apartment itself is just great. It is owned by a slightly Bohemian couple – a doctor and a photographer, Sasha and Andrei, who are in fact now in Paris working on a fashion shoot. They have filled the apartment with all sorts of eclectic stuff – old bottles on every spare surface, seltzer bottles, a samovar, antique scales, musical scores papering the bathroom, a pair of antlers – making it a really homely place to stay. (Though perhaps not up to embassy staff standards, Row.) It think they live there themselves when they have no guests, though they have another apartment and sleep in the studio when both apartments are full. Before they left, Andrei marked his favourite places in town on a map for us, including the best jazz bar and a bar where every night is New Year's Eve. Very cool, but not that practical for people who are in for the night from about 6. We're currently sharing the apartment with a Finnish business woman (who reckons Bucky looks like a Finnish boy) and – due to a double booking – a student from Norway (who says Bucky looks Norwegian).

There is so much to do in St Petersburg that it overwhelms me. We've taken a cruise on the canals and walked about half the floor area of the Hermitage (while Bucky obligingly slept in his stroller). We might not do any more pure tourist activities however, as it takes time away from exploring the city. St Petersburg, which seems to be actively cultural at all times, is particularly buzzing at the moment, celebrating the White Nights. There are all sorts of exhibitions and shows on in the city and we hope to be able to catch some of the excitement.

Travelling with a toddler

Travelling with a toddler is very, very hard. It is immensely stressful dealing with Bucky when he doesn't sleep during journeys and when he reacts badly to the lack of sleep the next day. It is also very difficult for us to get around and see the sights, as we have to fit everything around his sleeps and attention span. But for all the difficulties we have, it is that much harder for Bucky himself. We try to get out to parks as much as we can, but he still spends so much of the day in his stroller or cooped up inside the apartments we are staying in. The dramatic changes in routine and surroundings have also clearly affected him, and I am sure he is missing Playspace and all the other fun things in Wellington. For the first few days in Moscow he was quite short tempered and was seriously off his food. I felt really terrible and worried for him.

He did get his appetite back, thankfully. His mood has also greatly improved. He is dealing with things really well, all things considered. He is finding a lot of fun in the new places we are taking him to, particularly the apartment in St Petersburg, which is a treasure trove of interesting knick-knacks for him to play with. His language is also developing in leaps and bounds, just like Corina said it would. He is picking up so many new words and is much better at copying what we are saying. He is even developing an understanding of grammar – he corrected himself when he said "me turn" to "my turn".

So while it is tough for all us, it is very, very rewarding.

The Kremlin

After several efforts, we finally got inside the Kremlin. Here are some photographs we took there.

A phenomenon

I have been struck by an interesting phenomenon after discovering the book Confederacy of Dunces. After hearing about this book, I began to find references to it. And not just the occasional obscure reference; I find references everywhere. Presumably I must have come across countless references before my discovery of it. However, none of them made any impact on me ­— I simply don't remember ­­ever having come across a book called Confederacy of Dunces. Clearly I was completely overlooking those earlier references; they were disappearing in some sort of blind spot of ignorance. Alternatively, the book only started to appear in my phenomenological world after I became aware of it.

Looking in the local bookstore for novels by contemporary Russian authors, I bought a book The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov — another book I had never heard of. The very next day I took Bucky to Patriarch's Pond for a run around. Reading up about Patriarch's Pond in my Lonely Planet I read "This peaceful fish pond was immortalised by writer Mikhail Bulgakov, who had the devil appear here in The Master and Margarita..."

Moskva

Our first experience of Moscow was rather a disappointment. Sam came and picked us up from the airport and we took a taxi together to the centre of the city, where their apartment is. The taxi crawled through clogged streets while we sweltered inside. It was flat and grey with a brown, pollution-laden horizon. It seemed to me that the focus of the city was on the roading, rather than on the buildings, a sure sign of urban blight. From the main street we passed into a labyrinth of narrow lanes, enclosed by bluffs of apartment blocks. The taxi slowed further as it negotiated the banks of parked cars that narrowed the street to a single lane. Even here the cars were overtaking the city.

Arriving at the apartment was a great relief. Sam and Row's apartment is spacious and comfortable and — most importantly on such days — it has air conditioning throughout. We passed the rest of the day catching up with them and letting our tiredness overcome us, insulated from the rest of Moscow.

The next day we headed down to the Kremlin and Red Square, a short walk from the apartment. Seeing the city from foot, I immediately changed my early, uncharitable opinion — Moscow is in fact quite an attractive city. The inner city is made up of stately stone buildings, many of them neoclassical or art moderne. It is true that the city is cut apart by huge roads with heavy traffic, but while walking you can look in pretty much any direction and be impressed with the architecture. Even the subway entrances look like museums.

Down in the Kremlin area, the architecture is particularly grand. We still haven't got inside the Kremlin, but most of the buildings around Red Square are very fitting for the capital of a former empire, such as the former state-run department store GUM. Another rather impressive series of buildings is the so-called Seven Sisters — towering buildings commissioned by Stalin, in a kind of neo-gothic style, such as the building in the picture to the right.

There is something of a tendency to the baroque in some Russian/Soviet design however, which occasionally is taken too far. St Basil's Cathedral, for example, is very close to being gaudy, though it is a very cool building. I have to share the most extreme example of gaudiness — a statue to Peter the Great that we saw from a boat ride down Moscow River. It is twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty (minus platform) and is absolutely hideous, but wonderfully hideous. Apparently it was originally a statue of Christopher Columbus, but with the head replaced by Peter's.

But enough architecture and tourist snaps.

Russia was in the middle of a heat wave when we arrived. After we failed to get into the Kremlin (the ticket booth was empty), we took a walk through the park underneath the Kremlin walls. It was wonderful. The park was full of people, wandering the grounds and lying on the grass. And drinking — some of the ice cream stalls were selling beer by the pint. Dozens of people were jumping into fountains. The Muscovites were all out enjoying the summer. It was so much fun.

The next day it rained however and temperature dropped 20°, demonstrating that Moscow is a cold city that just masquerades as a hot city in summer.

Moscow is a very interesting city. It is full of people and extremely busy (on weekdays at least — on the weekend most of the population seem to leave for their countryside bachs). It has loads of fashionable shops on its main shopping street (which also functions as a four-lane highway) and there are cafés everywhere. Being good Wellingtonians we had to try them. Coffees in Moscow cafés cost about $7, and we can report that Coffee Mania is pretty good, while Coffee House (spelled Koφe Xays, which I consistently parse as "Coffee Days") is kind of the Burger King of Moscow
cafés.

Our best culinary experience (apart from the meals we've been having in the apartment) was on the evening we took the boat trip with Sam and Row. They took us to their favourite blini stand, where we had Russian crêpes with a variety of fillings.

We're in Moscow until Tuesday, when we take an overnight train to St Petersburg.

Our hosts

For those who don't know, we are in Russia visiting our friends Sam and Rowena and their 7-month old son Eddie. For those who do know Eddie, I can tell you he is thriving. He's sitting up and enjoying his tummy time. He is all bright-eyed and curious, and very vocal.

Bucky is really keen on Eddie. He's giving him heaps of hugs and pats and even lets him pull his hair. As soon as he wakes in the morning he starts asking for Eddie, and when Eddie is in his cot napping, Bucky asks after him with a plaintive "Eddie gone?"